This article was published on January 23, 2018

YouTube marks Facebook and White House links as phishing attacks


YouTube marks Facebook and White House links as phishing attacks

As part of its efforts to make the internet a safer place, Google has begun displaying warnings when opening links posted under YouTube videos. But it appears that, in addition to malicious pages, the video sharing service is wrongly flagging tons of legitimate websites for “malware, phishing or disturbing content.”

A number of users have reported that clicking on links found in the description field under videos now redirects them to a warning page, cautioning users against opening certain websites. Among others, it appears Google is targeting popular destinations like Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and – on at least one occasion – the White House.

Here is how the warning looks like:

 

It appears that Google is running a trial with this sort of warnings on YouTube – and has been for a couple of months now.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

While some TNW staffers were greeted by a warning message when clicking on links under certain videos, other colleagues were able to open links under the same videos without seeing any warning at all.

Interestingly, the warnings seem to appear selectively. While links under a little known channel (with less than 10,000 subscribers) prompted the malware warning, URLs posted under videos from YouTube personality Philip DeFranco seem to open just fine.

While Google has long implemented similar warnings on Search, it appears the company first introduced the feature on YouTube as early as October last year.

Indeed, a slew of miffed users took to Twitter to complain the video sharing service seems to be blocking lots of credible websites with these warnings, including the White House and IBM:

We have reached out to Google for further comment and will update this piece accordingly should we hear back.

In the meantime, try not to get freaked out if YouTube flags your favorite site for malware – chances are it’s a glitch.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with